Monday, October 15, 2012

Vegan English baking: Fruit digestive biscuits (cookies)

It seems that I have spoken about fruit digestive biscuits a few times on this blog. When I took part in Kate's listography of top 5 biscuits, regular and fruit digestive biscuits made my list. That post also sparked some interesting comments about differences between Australia biscuits and American cookies, and allowed me to conclude that digestive biscuits are like American Graham crackers but softer and perhaps a little sweeter. More recently, I showed yoghurt-coated fruit digestives from Spain, a little more exotic than the regular fruit variety but still true to the original digestive biscuit base.

Given the above, it is surprising that I have never tried to make digestive biscuits before. I genuinely grieved when fruit Granita biscuits, Australia's closest option to fruit digestives, disappeared from the Arnott's range some years ago. Digestives aren't a complicated biscuit and they don't even need veganising, with the standard McVitie's version being dairy and egg free.

For those of you who aren'tfamiliar with digestives, they are one of the more popular biscuits (cookies) in Britain and are a soft-ish biscuit that is perfect for dunking in tea. They are made from brown wheat flour, which gives a distinctive taste, and are slightly but not very sweet.

Digestives havereportedly been around since 1839, when they were developed by Alexander Grant, a worker at McVitie's. At that time they were called "homewheat" biscuits because McVitie's used British rather than imported wheat. The change in name to "digestive" biscuits stems from the use of baking soda in original recipes, which was seen as an aid to digestion at the time. Chocolate-coated digestives were created in 1925, and these days the flavour options are extensive, including milk and dark chocolate as well as dark chocolate caramel

McVitie's is the best known brand of digestive, and so it was with considerable surprise that I found the British McVitie's website to be lacking in fruit digestive biscuits! I am still perplexed by this discovery and wish that I had checked biscuit aisles more carefully when we were in England. McVitie's do list a fruit shortcake, and other English brands make fruit digestives, but I fear that McVitie's has dropped a little in my view with their omission of the fruit digestive from their range.

McVitie's regular digestive biscuits, and my fruit digestive biscuits

Today, of course, is about making fruit digestives and not about McVitie's biscuits per se. I was interested to see that most online recipes for digestive biscuits list butter and milk in the ingredient list, and often oats, despite those being missing from the ingredient lists of commercial versions. I decided to be guided by the McVitie's packet, and my version below thus omits milk and uses vegetable oil rather than non-dairy spread.

I used currants as the only fruit addition, but you could be more adventurous and use other dried fruit if desired. I also decided against using other flavourings like vanilla or mixed spice, although I think both would work. Perhaps next time I will branch out a little more, but for this recipe I thought simple would be best.

Preheat your oven to 190'C (375'F) and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and brown sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the oil and water and mix to combine. Add the currants and knead to create a thick, smooth dough.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface, to about 0.5cm thickness. Cut into circles using a cookie cutter or round glass. Bake on the prepared trays for 14 - 16 minutes or until golden brown; allow to cool on the trays before storing.

When I first tried these, I made sure to eat them without eating a commercial digestive biscuit first. When consumed this way, on their own terms, the biscuits are thoroughly enjoyable. They are just sweet enough, with plenty of currants to balance out the wheat biscuit; are soft enough to bite into smoothly but crisp enough to break evenly in two; and work well when dunked into a cup of tea (a crucial part of performance!). Mr Bite declared them to be very similar to 'true' digestives.

Sadly, though, when I subsequently bit into a regular McVitie's digestive biscuit, I realised that my version was missing the distinct, characteristic digestive taste. McVitie's are a little maltier, a little wheatier, they have a little more something that is missing from this version.

I suppose I shall just have to make these again, and again, until I hit upon that something. Fortunately, I don't think I'll mind that process at all.

21 comments:

Now I want to try digestive biscuits.. i'll have to see if they have them at the world store in town (they have lots of foreign foods.)

I find that homemade versions of things are often perfect as long as you don't call them by the name of what you're mimicking. For example, vegan mac and cheese is not mac and cheese, it's pasta with cashew-nutritional yeast sauce. That way, people who normally would eat "real" mac and cheese aren't disappointed!

I must say I've never had a fruit digestive. For me they are that perfectly plain biscuit to eat dunked in a cup of tea. I love the malty taste and can't quite imagine what they would be like with fruit. But now I know of the existance of such a thing I may just have to seek it out.

I don't know if I have ever had a fruit digestive but I do love the chocolate ones. I think digestives have a distinctive rough texture that I wouldn't think would come from wholemeal flour - in fact I was curious and looked up the ingredients and they seem to have something called "wholemeal" in them - maybe this is a typo. Was it just the flavour or also the texture that needs work? Would some barley malt syrup or wheat bren help?

You're spot on - the ingredient list has wholemeal flour & then also wholemeal. I pondered a few options for 'wholemeal' but didn't really know what would be best. I think wheat bran might be good - next time! The texture was pretty good actually but the flavour missed an element.

I've never actually eaten a digestive biscuit. When I first moved here, I thought they were for constipation or something! Then when I realised they are just a cookie, I had a look and the packet I saw was not vegan. Since then I haven't really tried hard - I've just zeroed in on the gingernuts instead. But I think I will have to give them a try!

I remember those Arnotts biscuits well. They had those very hard dried currants in them and I loved them. (I hope I'm on the right track - I do remember these being digestive biscuits). I love these plain sweet biscuits but I like them even more with a bit of fruit in them xx

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